


A stone-hard heart trembles

by trickztr



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Canonical Character Death, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-03
Updated: 2017-09-03
Packaged: 2018-12-23 05:55:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11983578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trickztr/pseuds/trickztr
Summary: Javert finally gets to the end of the chase, but isn't quite how he'd expected.





	A stone-hard heart trembles

It’s a few days later when Javert finally makes it back to the (now) wrecked cafè. 

Though it’s clear someone cleaned the place up - no broken furniture anywhere to be seen and the floor seemed to have been scrubbed and polished -, the stench of blood still lingered. Made worse, actually, by the smothering heat of Summer.

He doesn’t remember their names now, but clear as day, Javert can still their young bodies lined side by side. Justice was served, he’d told himself that day. Those children attempted to disrupt the order and action had to be taken swiftly. Nothing more and nothing less than the natural order of things.

One of the mothers cried on his shoulder. A fair-skinned, redheaded woman with freckles sprinkled all across her cheeks and nose. Javert had been impassive, but yet the woman threw herself in his arms and wailed about her young boy. It took two guards to escort Mme. Prouvaire out of the room.

Javert shakes his head, dismissing that memory. He’d come on a mission and shouldn’t be distracted. Valjean, still at large, had been last seen here with the boy he’d saved that night, many witnesses told him.

He takes a few steps inside, careful not to trip over any of the tumbled furniture. Perhaps his fugitive left some crucial clue to his whereabouts under all that rubble.

As Javert puts his foot on the first step, he hears the wood creaking on the upper level. Someone was here. Silent as a cat, he ventures up, pistol in hand.

“Oh,” the young boy says, clutching some books. 

Javert furrows his brow. “It’s you. The dying boy from that night,” he says, his tone accusatory and pistol firmly trained at the young man. “Tell me, boy, where’s Jean Valjean?”

The boy before held little resemblance to the one he’d seen that night. Stripped of his revolutionary clothes, hair coiffed and dressed in black, he looked the perfect picture of aristocracy. Somehow, he looked even younger now.

“Pardon me, Monsieur,” he says anxiously, placing the books on the nearby table. “I think you might be mistaking me for someone else. I only came here to pick up what was left to salvage from this place before the Madame sold it.”

“I know you, boy. I know your face. You were one of the rebels and he rescued you that night.” Javert takes a step closer, though the distance between them was still quite significant. “What’s your name?”

“Pontmercy, monsieur. Marius Pontmercy.” He puts his hands behind his back and Javert cocks his pistol. “Please don’t shoot me!” He begs, hands flying up in surrender. “I just got married and would be a tragedy if my beloved lost her husband the same day she lost her father.”

Javert tilts his chin up and squares his shoulders. He knows he doesn’t need to. Even from this distance it’s clear he towers over this Pontmercy boy. He lowers his weapon, but he can smell the lie. This rebel knows where Jean Valjean is and thinks him too stupid to realize he’s stalling.

“Where’s the man who was with you that night? Tell me where I can find Jean Valjean.”

Marius holds his gaze for another second, and it’s pathetic how his lower lip is trembling. Finally, his shoulders sink, his head hangs and he replies in a small voice. “You can find him in the cemetery in the convent, monsieur. Jean Valjean passed away a last night.”

Javert gnarls, baring his teeth like an animal, aiming his pistol at the boy once more. “Don’t you dare lie to me, rebel scum!”

“I’m not!” Marius cries, flailing his arms. “I swear to you, by God, by my beloved wife: Valjean is dead. I can take you to his grave, if you’d like.”

Marius continues. Keeps talking and promising and swearing and making awful sounds with his mouth. Javert hears none of that. His ears are ringing and his heart seems to have skipped a beat. Or maybe it just finally started beating, racing fast and faster, attempting to catch up with all the years it’d been unused.

Valjean is gone. Two decades of pursuit for nothing. He’d been too late and now there was nothing that could be done.

Javert tumbles, disoriented, and falls against the wall near him. He loses the grip on his pistol when his arms fall to his side, clanking hard against the wood floor. A sob escapes his lips and before he can stop himself, he’s crying freely, desperately, hopelessly.

Pontmercy must’ve rushed to his side, because he feels a pair of warm, hard arms around his shoulders.  _What a fool_ , he thinks,  _a wiser man would’ve taken the opportunity to run_.

“That’s alright, monsieur,” Pontmercy tells him in a low, soothing voice, as he rubs a hand against his shoulders. “Just let it out.”

It’s a testement to his poor current state, that he doesn’t push the boy away. Under any other circumstances he’d probably scoff at the ridiculousness of the scene, but he can’t help it. The tears and the sobbing just keep coming and in no time at all, they’re both sliding to the floor, Javert leaned against Pontmercy’s chest, crying like a child.

“I imagine it must be very hard for you,” he says. “My beloved told me you two had a long history.”

Javert doesn’t bother replying. Mostly because there are no words to said to this. History? Perhaps they could call it that. For twenty years this man was the only thing in his mind and God help him, he never made up his mind on whether he wanted to kill or hold Valjean. Now he’ll never get to do either.

**Author's Note:**

> Title inspired by the lyrics in Javert's Suicide for the brazilian Les Mis revival.


End file.
